that worn looking floor and the spinner chipping looks great mal, i've used maskol between coats to simulate chipped paint, but i've never really been happy with that because the maskol when applied always seems to end up with every chip being the same size and in 1/72 a little too big.

that floor looks dead right to me, with a slight uneveness of wear that makes it look totally natural

Yep, I've tried other ways and seen modellers try the salt technique but it just never looks right. I had read about the "hair spray" technique and thought that it only worked with acrylics. I was told though that it is the reaction of the hairspray with water that allows this technique to work. The problem for me though is that I use MR Paint, which is basically a cellulose paint. It dries very quickly so I did the chipping within the hour, I could probably wait only half that. It didn't seem to be working on the spinner so I use a cocktail stick that had paint on the tip to rough it up a bit and chipped a bit more on the spinner tip than I intended to. So I'm not sure if it was the hair spray or the fact that the yellow was painted on silver?The make of hair spray may not matter, I have a large can of cheap stuff but it smells pretty bad!

that worn looking floor and the spinner chipping looks great mal, i've used maskol between coats to simulate chipped paint, but i've never really been happy with that because the maskol when applied always seems to end up with every chip being the same size and in 1/72 a little too big.

that floor looks dead right to me, with a slight uneveness of wear that makes it look totally natural

....just had a quick look it seems maggy has a big can of tresemme that might just end up in my paint cupboard "by mistake"!

I have noticed that on the last 2 pics of the spinner that there are bits on the surface, these are from the chipping process. They don't really show up to the naked eye so I'm glad that I have taken some pics and posted them!

Some parts for my Revell 1/32 P-51, using the "hair spray" method. This is for Maggie's "M" challenge, as well as the fact that I have been wanting to produce a model of this aircraft for quite some time. Revell's new 1/32 scale kit gives me the opportunity to render this in 1/32 scale without resorting to the expense of the Tamiya kit

The floor of the P-51 was ply wood painted black. I painted it first with the cockpit green, then masked that and applied a bleached linen colour. I then applied raw sienna artist oil paint, dragged over the linen colour to simulate wood. This needs to dry for a few days. While this was drying I painted parts of the model, that would end up as silver, with Alclad II matt black primer. These areas were then painted with Alclad II "high speed silver. This included the propeller spinner.

When the oil paint on the cockpit floor had dried I applied hair spray, which had been decanted from the can (Treseme ) to the floor area and to the spinner. I gave that an hour(ish) to dry and then applied matt black paint to the floor and the yellow to the spinner (and the prop tips). Within about 45-60mins, I chipped the spinner, using a wooden cocktail stick and weathered through the black of the floor with water and a stiff, cut down paint brush. It takes a little time for the water to react with the hair spray (actually scratching the black, just a little, allowed the process to work). Water was used on the spinner, after it was chipped with the cocktail stick but I'm not sure if it had any effect?

For the 4" yellow tips on the prop blades I cut strips of material at a scale 4" (3.18mm), laid these on the tips, butted masking tape up to them, masked the rest of the prop, which is already painted silver and black, the painted the tips, when I painted the spinner.